The Lie Detectives - by Sasha Issenberg (Paperback)

About the Book

"A decade after The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns, journalist Sasha Issenberg again goes behind the scenes of political campaigns. This time, the most urgent research and strategizing are being conducted on how to deal with disinformation"--

Book Synopsis

How can political campaigns fight back against disinformation?

A decade after The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns, which Politico called "Moneyball for politics," journalist Sasha Issenberg returns to the cutting edge of political innovation to reveal how campaigns are navigating the era's most pressing challenge: how to win in a world awash in lies.

The Lie Detectives is a lively and deep secret history of Democratic politics in the Trump years. Our main character, Jiore Craig, is a young but battle-hardened veteran of the misinformation wars, and she leads a memorable cast including LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, whose emergence as one of the American left's biggest donors has forced his adviser Dmitri Mehlhorn into the role of moral compass for a movement still wrestling with whether it should counter fake news by producing its own, and David Goldstein and Jehmu Greene, who are confronting "the Big Lie," in the vernacular of online conspiracy theories, with gifs, memes, and ugly graphics of their own.

The Lie Detectives presents a vivid snapshot of a political class trying to come to terms with an exploding social media landscape and using every weapon in its arsenal to counter the biggest threat it has ever faced to its way of doing business and winning power.

Review Quotes

One of Politico's ten books to look forward to in 2024

"A deeply reported and skillfully written examination of the global war on disinformation." --Washington Monthly

"A provocative if dispiriting look at the endless campaign to curtail the big lie and a million lesser ones." --Kirkus Reviews

"Sasha Issenberg is a journalist as prophet. He consistently identifies the next important thing in politics--and then explains it with vivid characters and irresistible narrative. I thought that I couldn't be more alarmed about the future of democracy, but this book, unnervingly, proved me wrong." --Franklin Foer, author of The Last Politician